Dinner

spaghetti alle vongole

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This is the food of the gods and needs no explaining as to how good it is. It’s perfect for  a stress-free Valentine’s dinner or a date night as it only take as long as the pasta takes to cook.

When I’ve been to Venice I practically live on it as it really is my favourite thing and I can’t get enough of it. It can be made in under 20 minutes and the ingredients can be bought days in advance. This recipe is an original Venetian recipe which I always love to cook, as it is like a lot of Italian recipes, very simple. There are two sorts of Vongole, in bianco, which is made like this recipe, or in rosso which is made with tomatoes. When I make it everyone goes mad for it… so try it, it’s not expensive and it is quick and easy.

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moroccan carrot salad

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I love this recipe so much. I got it from the Moro cookbook and have tweaked it a little to make it easier. Every time I serve it everyone adores it and wants the recipe. The taste is sweetly delicious and very Moroccan because it’s really fresh and fragrant with the perfume of cumin and coriander. It’s great with meat, salads and couscous dishes or with my vegetable tajine. I don’t peel the carrots because I can’t be bothered and I assume most of the goodness and taste is in the skin and no one notices if you do or don’t.

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express salmon kedgeree

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Kedgeree is one of those quintessentially British dishes, dating back to the 1800’s, that’s easier to make than you think plus I’ve made it even easier. It’s a lovely mixture of creamy eggs, fish and rice with the gentle perfume of Indian spices. My version is inspired by a recipe by the cook Roxy Beaujolais which uses salmon instead of smoked haddock. It’s perfect for a light Christmas Eve supper, or as a New Years Eve supper bearing in mind it only takes about twenty minutes to cook. It’s also perfect for dinner for two. Continue reading →

crab with avocado and lime on toast

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This recipe is a great way of making a fairly expensive ingredient go a long way, and anyway, what could be nicer than crab with chilli and lime on crunchy bread with avocado and pickled cucumber? The perfect combo of flavours and textures. The lime is the perfect match for crab and is slightly more subtle than if I used a lemon, which you can do if you prefer. It’s a great starter to any dinner, just multiply it by the number of guests.

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Georgia O’Keeffe’s potato curry

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I went to the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition at the Tate last year which was great but I am fascinated by her lifestyle more than I am by her paintings. I would love to go to her house Ghost Ranch in Mexico and I pore through the book I have about it. I love her style, aesthetic and of course her kitchen and larder. A few weeks ago some friends took me to an amazing book shop in Piccadilly called Assouline, and there I got a cookbook with her favourite recipes in it called Dinner with Georgia O’Keeffe. It’s a lovely book with great pictures and lots of recipes that she cooked at Ghost Ranch. I feel theres something that brings you closer to people through recipes. You can almost feel them there with you. So I thought I’d share my favourites from that book with you, because it’s evocative of her history and lifestyle. Apparently she kept a stack of cookbooks as bedside reading. A woman after my own heart.

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vegan laksa bowl

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I love this bowl of coconutty deliciousness. Laksa is a comforting Thai coconut broth with vegetables and noodles. It’s spicy, creamy and noodley. I find a lot of vegan recipes are trying to emulate meat dishes, which is not great because vegan ingredients can be fantastic and with imagination don’t need to pretend they are something they are not. There are a lot of sumptuous vegan dishes that don’t shout deprivation of any kind. Hopefully you will try my vegan recipes and agree that they are just as good as any recipe using animal products, I try to make them look delicious too, and full of colour and not just a load of beige-ness.
This recipe is my take on a Laksa I hope you like it. It’s healthy and delicious.

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sweet and sour okra

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This okra recipe is taken from my first ever Madhur Jaffrey cookbook my then boyfriend was given by someone he worked with because he loved curries and he loved cooking. We often used to argue about who cooked the dinner because we both loved to cook so much. Which led me to realise that theres’s room for only one domestic goddess in a relationship. The book has inspired me ever since then although I change the recipes to contain much less oil, and I use coconut oil instead of ghee. It is one of the most delicious ways to eat okra because it’s full of flavours which are sweet and fragrant and it has the gentle perfume of cumin and coriander. I also replace the sugar in her recipes with maple syrup, but you can use sugar if you prefer. I often serve it with other Indian dishes like dhal or just with plain basmati rice and an Indian pickle. One of reasons Indian food lends itself to vegetarian and vegan cooking so well is because it’s very, very tasty and has great textures and colours. I usually cook Indian food if I’m having my friends over for a vegetarian feast as I know everyone loves it.

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lentil and feta salad

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This salad is just an assembly job and only takes a few minutes to make. It originally comes from a low carb cook book I covet called Easy Low Carb and the recipes are complied by different authors. I think it’s out of print now, but it’s full of recipes to inspire anyone who wants to cook low carb or low G.I. but wants to keep it interesting and delicious. I have tweaked this recipe a bit to suit my tastes. I replaced the vinegar with lemon juice and added a tad of sweetness and lemon zest because lemon zest from organic unwaxed lemons is a really healthy addition to your food as well as super tasty. This salad is perfect with fish or meat or with other salads or just as a snack.

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fennel salad with pistachios and feta

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I had a salad similar to this with my friend Amanda this week in a restaurant. We really liked it and thought it was a great idea, but thought the dressing needed a bit more oomph. Roasted fennel is a fantastic ingredient in a salad, it loses its liquoricey flavour and has a delicious delicate flavour and texture. I’ve also added a few extra ingredients to make it more tasty. This recipe has all the right components for our tastes plus there’s the crunchy and creamy thing going on which we love.

Recipe

Serves 2.

Ingredients:
2 fennel bulbs sliced fairly thinly
100g Feta
A lemon cut into wedges
Some baby salad leaves
A sprinkling of Sumac
A handful of pistachios
2 tablespoons of pomegranate seeds
3 tablespoons olive oil plus a bit more for roasting the fennel
2 teaspoons lime juice
2 tablespoons of pomegranate molasses
Salt and pepper to taste

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midnight spaghetti 2

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This is my second midnight spaghetti (sometimes called spaghetti di mezzanotte) only I use linguine, but you can use spaghetti if you prefer. I got this version from The New York Times and because of its simplicity and because it’s not only a great store-cupboard standby, it’s also perfect when you can’t be bothered to cook yet another massive meal at Christmas or any time and fancy something easy, delicious and quick. It’s the chefs choice because they arrive home tired and want something easy to cook after a day of cooking, and the reason it’s really tasty is because it’s flavour bombed with a combo of anchovies, garlic, chilli and capers. I love it with Parmesan or without. It’s also perfect served with a crunchy green salad with my vinaigrette or as a midnight feast in a candle lit kitchen à deux after a party.
Recipe 
Serves 2 (you can double or triple the quantities).
Ingredients:
250g of linguine or spaghetti
3-4 tablespoons of olive oil
4 anchovy fillets chopped
3 garlic cloves peeled and very thinly sliced
1 tablespoon of small capers chopped
¼-1/2 teaspoon of chilli flakes
A small bunch of parsley, finely chopped
Grated Parmesan (optional)
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